riddles in the dark
by shiva-goddessof
Summary: "What did she dream of, when she dreamed? She's not sure, any more. She didn't dream of this." Passion, confusion, and low lighting. A Finnchel vignette, post-Journey. My first piece in a long time; reviews SVP.


What did she dream of, when she dreamed? She's not sure, any more. She didn't dream of this.

There are pleasures, of course. Some are more unexpected than others. There is just so _much _of him – his broad shoulders, his long legs. His hands and feet make hers look like toys. He has already learned how to distribute his weight so he doesn't cut off her breathing. Making out standing up doesn't work, it hurts his neck, so now he simply picks her up. In the daylight it all comes together, she can pick each feature apart and reconcile them. There he is, just as he's always been. In the dark, it all comes apart into texture and sensation, and she loses not only him but herself.

Some things she remembers, or never forgot. His dark-amber eyes, up close. His soft and mobile mouth. His skin is as fair and delicate as a woman's, spangled with freckles that multiply now that the Ohio summer has made its brief appearance. She wants to tell him he should wear sunscreen, but thinks it makes her sound like such a _girl_.

He blushes like a girl; painfully, uncontrollably. Sometimes she feels the heat from his face and neck when they're making out, in the dark, but she never says anything.

She wants... strange things, without names or meanings. Sometimes she would like to bite, to scratch. Last week she ran a fingernail, idly, down his spine; he shuddered, and not with desire. She tries not to do it again, she really does, but the feel of his whole body responding to her is intoxicating. The first time he hitched her legs around his waist, it felt dangerous, precarious, intrusively sexual; she felt wide open, vulnerable. Now she has found the spot where they fit, just above his hipbones. She remembers working up the courage to explore timidly with her free hand, and how he gasped and trembled. Eventually he removed her own hand with one that shook.

It has never occurred to her before that there is more than one way to be naked.

Jesse held back, always. He enjoyed himself (she thinks). She felt... you know, _that _against her, more than once. He liked being the superior, experienced one; she was the shy young ingénue, being inducted into the world of the sensual. She knew the role, knew she could always pull back if she needed to. But Jesse never lost control. He always seemed to have seen their interactions through to the end, planned his positions, marshalled his troops. She could say yes or no; he'd prepared for both.

She's not sure who's the ingénue now; one of them, or both, or neither. It's always him who stops, and she is both frustrated and relieved. There is a word, somewhere, repeating itself on a frequency below hearing, rolling to a boil. She doesn't know whether it is _No, no _or _On._ She can sense his anxieties; he feels too big, too rough, too clumsy. It's in the hands that only brush against her until they find their purchase, the way he ducks his head when they walk together, the delicacy of the hand on her waist, in her hair. He is afraid, she knows, of hurting her, of scaring her with his intensity, his desires. _You don't know your own strength_, she heard Quinn say to him once.

Sometimes she wishes he would be a little bit rough.

He smells familiar, and also unfamiliar. Men's deodorant, cinnamon gum. Whatever he uses in the shower has lime in it. After football practice there is sweat and cut grass and his tongue tastes of salt. Underneath there is something that she can't figure out, something that she doesn't even know if she likes, but when she tastes it, smells it, her stomach clenches and her mind goes blank.

They talk, of course. They talk about music and school and sports and movies and what's up with Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury and why Kurt dresses like he does and what songs they should sing next year. But sometimes it feels like they always trail off, awkwardly, and she knows he is thinking (she is thinking) about the dark. When they're together in public she never knows what to do with her hands. She hates their eyes on her, Kurt's, Tina's, Artie's, Mercedes', even Santana's; bright, acquisitive, wanting something else she has no name for. The only one who treats them normally, who doesn't watch them, is Mike. They bumped into him after a movie and he smiled at them both, talked to Finn about football and to her about choreography, and she babbled like a fool, with relief and gratitude. He slid an arm around her as Mike walked away.

When he presses against her his heartbeat is deafening; the breath going in and out overwhelms her own. Last night he edged a timid hand inside her blouse and stroked her nipples through the cotton of her bra; they tingled, maddeningly, for hours after he left. She hitches his t-shirt up and presses her hands against his chest, his back, and it is at this point that he begins to dissolve into textures, that her body becomes something that doesn't belong to her, the muscles in her thighs tightening, her hips shifting raggedly, her mouth annexed, conquered, yielding. It seems to understand something that she doesn't. She doesn't realise she has been tugging on the shirt until the heat of his skin is burning against the side of her thigh and the base of her throat.

Can she start undoing her own buttons? Should she ask him to do it? She can't speak at all. Neither of them speak. She is not sure that she wants to. She is not sure she knows how.

This can't go on. But it can't stop either.


End file.
